“Is AR just like a lift-the-flap book?”
What value can AR offer for people and enterprises?
The session outlines various definitions of AR such as location based platform or image recognition platform and how the technology provides valuable insight for marketing. Exploring various case studies, we will discuss the current situations and issues for AR as well as its future.

Gary will be showing several of his Augmented Reality branding overview videos such as the recent Recognition – Business Opportunities but also one of three Location Based Augmented Reality Story developments in this space Â called ‘Time Treasure” – a rudimentary, story rich LBARG (location based AR game?!) that MUVEDesign are currently story designing & coding for Android tablets. A hort 2 minute taster video embedded below…

Without giving the plot away, the structure of this game is quite straightforward. There are ten layers of time from 2050 back to 5000BC that you slowly penetrate following stories, clues and trails all based at POIs (points of interest, precise locations) around your city. The traditional MMOG talking-head quest and story givers are a unique part of this as well as a range of capture & loot quests that require you in some cases to do a little ‘real world’ grinding… ok not too much 🙂 For me the challenge as always is about creating strong ‘call to actions’ and constructing a narrative backbone to make it worth your while walking and in some cases running around town! I will do a post when this reaches a full working pilot.

We will keep you updated in the next months of progress on this and the branded client games also in progress.

I was looking for one place on the web that had a list of the mix of male and females across the ‘game/virtual world’ space. I have actually found it useful to quote many of these stats to clients who still believe console games, online ‘quest’ based games and virtual worlds are still the domain of twenty something, slightly overweight, couch potato, anti-social males. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are lots of Australian centric insights (eg: SMH here “Never too old to play“) But these are more global or US based. Read on and in no particular order!

The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games forÂ 13 years.

The average age of the most frequent game purchaser isÂ 40 years old.

Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent aÂ significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).

In 2008,Â 26 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999

Sixty-three percent of parents believe games are a positive part of their childrenâ€™s lives.

More than half – 53% – of all American adults play video games of some kind

Independent of all other factors, younger adults are still more likely to play games.

Among older adults 65+ who play video games, nearly a third play games everyday, a significantly larger percentage than all younger players, of whom about 20% play everyday.

Gaming consoles are the most popular for young adults: 75% of 18-29 year old gamers play on consoles, compared with 68% who use computers

Computers are the most popular among the total adult gaming population, with 73% of adult gamers using computers to play games, compared with 53% console users, 35% who using cell phones, and 25% using portable gaming devices.

The percentage of female video gamers climbed from 33 to 38 percent in five years bolstered in part by Nintendo’s Wii, but also “interactive group games” such as Singstar, Rock Band, and Lips, as well as The Sims, The Movies, Nintendogs and NeoPets.

Consumer Electronics Association study found that 65 percent of women in the 25-34 age bracket play video games, while only 35 percent of men in that group said that they play video games. The key factor involved with these findings is the increasing popularity of casual games, especially among women. (These casual titles are typically found on web portals like Yahoo!, AOL Games, PopCap Games, EA’s Pogo.com and elsewhere.)

Women were found to be slightly less likely than men in the 25-34 bracket to play traditional console games on systems like PlayStationÂ or Xbox.

Old (2000) but interesting item on ‘gender bending’ in games from womengamers.com

6% of subjects play female characters for 25% or less of their gaming time

An Australian project (initiated at a 2007 LAMP@AFTRS (Laboratory for Advanced Media Production) residential) called “Macbeth:What If” received further development/production funding from the NMC and the Australia Council. Project creator Kerreen Ely-Harper teamed up with producer Kate Richards and designerAngela Thomas to realise the original project, that built on the original project idea looking at the experiential teaching and awareness of Shakespeare’s works using Second Life. After a year or so of development they created an island in Second Life which also focuses on machinima creation in a rich virtual setting.

The video below is quick & cheerful, one-take, ‘Space Navigator’ Machinima and Music by Gary and the whole work was very similar in style and form to Thursday’s Fictions in Second Life, a MUVEDesigned project two years ago. Full credits for the Macbeth project below.